The reality may simply be Samsung offered a very low price that Apple cannot refuse. TSMC, while maintaining a 40%+ profit margin, doesn't have to lower its price; customers are well queued in line. However Samsung wants to expand their foundry business badly.

Apple can get away with whatever it does in US, at least as much as Samsung can in Korea.

You should read up on the history of Samsung, the history of Korea, the intertwined political/economic dynasties, and the current state of politics in Korea before you make such a ridiculous statement.

They may all be true.TSMC: Apple is feeling them out with older Apple A-series designs for Apple TV.GF: Maybe Apple is going to use the AMD's A-series APU (Xbox ONE and PS4) in some unknown device (console?) or iMac Retina. Apple needs fast graphic performance more than CPU performance on their Retina series of devices.Samsung: A proven and reliable source, so Apple would have a lot of reasons to continue to use them.Own fab: why not control your own destiny

Apple is shipping 5.4 million iPhones and iPads per week. PC sales are at 5.9 million units per week. These numbers were pieced together from macworld [macworld.com] and reuters. [reuters.com] Assuming all of Apple's dreams come true, in 2015 Apple must plan for the case it is selling more processors than Intel, which will mean that Apple needs all the fab capacity it can get. Additionally, given the recent track record on new product launches at TSMC and GloFo, Apple needs a backup plan if one or more fab suppliers have problems.

Even if Apple purchased a new fab, additional reserve capacity might be needed. That may be enough to ink a deal with Samsung. Samsung is the only company with the proven ability to make enough cell phone and tablet processors to cover the majority of the world wide market, including Apple.